Online Business Meetings – Using Technology to Cut Business Travel Costs

If you have a small business, you obviously envision it becoming a big and well established enterprise. As the business grows beyond city, country and continental borders, communication modes need to be upgraded. This is why as you nurture your business you have to think of the best way to cut traveling costs while maintaining a high level of productivity during business meetings.

In conventional business setting, designated employees would ideally travel across the world to make business deals or to attend conferences that would market the business. These business trips entail booking a hotel for accommodation, booking a meeting room, having transport arrangements to various meeting points, setting aside traveling allowances as well as organizing for meals for the traveling persons. We all agree that employees are bound to make fraudulent claims after a trip.

Some people misuse these business trips and turn them into their personal expeditions at the expense of their companies. Other employees turn the trips into a shopping spree. Monitoring the steps of your employees while they are away requires a lot of time and money thus many organizations would not think of spending funds to check on their employees whom they have sent away on business.

The best way to curb problems arising from traveling far to have meetings is to invest in a good online meeting room, with a powerful computer which can transmit multimedia. Have a web-cam, headsets if needed and install necessary software to support communication as the meeting goes on. It is also important to have a standby generator that ensures the meeting is not affected by power blackouts. With technology, you can link to your customers, suppliers and business partners at the comfort of your office.

In the long run, if you compare the money used to set up an online business meeting and that used to send staff to a physical meeting point, you will definitely settle for online meetings.